White Lie
by Morithil
Summary: A Wu Ji/ The Promise fanfic. Qingcheng wonders who the man she loves is and was. Qingcheng/Kunlun, Qingcheng/Guangming.


DISCLAIMER: I don't own Wu Ji/The Promise, alas.

W H I T E L I E

And they soar.

Real speed is imperceptible, Kunlun tells her, as is the coming of a baby's first tooth, or the realization that you have fallen in love. _I am in love_, Qingcheng holds him closer, nestling her face into his reassuringly warm neck, feeling the frantic pulse of life, skittish and moving as a colt's first tentative gallop. There is a faint fragrance of still trees and fresh snow about Kunlun. She remembered the scent from the night he freed her from the gilded birdcage, a clean, pure coolness that belied his chaotic tangle of hair and torn clothing. A scent that came into her dreams.

Manshen had said the words, but she had known before the goddess has spoken them. My true love has come to me. My true love has come to me. With Kunlun I can outrun time itself, and be unafraid.

Yet as the clouds part a hundredth time for them and the sun glitters blindingly through her half-shut eyes, she sees the glint of a golden mask lifted and tastes the salt-sweet heat of another mouth on hers and she remembers, remembers that the back she clings to now as the skies fall away beneath them is not the one she clasped with longing, desperate hands to her own body as if to erase the distance between them that is not there. And once more Qingcheng is transported, not by superhuman flight but by mortal magic, the power of unlooked-for passion. Such undeniable power, that of being loved with tenderness equal, if not greater than the almost jealous possession of her body. Power that asks for her love with lips that kiss hers with reverence even as the heady thrust of insistent hips demands the same, demands love me, love me.

_Begs_, love me. _And I loved_, Qingcheng screamed silently. I loved, pulling him to me, deeper, deeper and half-heartedly struggled, because I did not know whether I wanted to become one with ecstasy or flee from it because it was too much to bear and he-

Her tears briefly evaporate with the wind and return once more, clouding her vision.

_Guangming._

He was not the man who jumped from the falls to save her. He was not the man who killed the petty King who would have had her strip like a common whore for Wuhuan's army to save his own skin. He lied to me, she curls her white fingers into a tiny fist. It was Kunlun who did all these things for love, for love of me.

But her heart and her loins berate her with dying pinpricks of reproach. 'Twas Guangming you took to your bed, who took you higher than the clouds without leaving the earth, who loved you with such single-minded intensity you lost yourself over and over in the heat of his arms, the comfort of his mouth and the playful glint in his eyes as he surrendered beneath you on the straw covered roof, brushing stray hairs from your face with a gentle finger. 'Twas Guangming who could only whisper his hope that you would stay with him _Do I really have you now?_ As if you would vanish into thin air should he dare voice his desire in anything louder than an uncertain, lonely murmur. 'Twas Guangming who brought you the first_ true_ winged song of your body, coaxing joy from your lips _and_ your heart, this even as you could feel him suppress his own fulfillment. That war-hardened body tensed and trembled to keep the beast at bay for another second, another moment, another eternity, and all for you. And when he could no longer deny the bliss you were both consumed by, did you not also cry out in notes to mingle with his, elated that you were the one to bring him such pleasure?

_Were your days not filled with laughter and play, and your nights with undimmed, unwavering love?_

In the end, he did not lie. His lips never claimed ownership of the hand that clasped yours and led you to safety before diving to certain death. Proud, confident General Guangming, beloved of the people, worshipped by his army, loyal to the King did not say it was he who rescued you that day. And if he nodded in acquiescence of your accusation that by the falls it was he who told you to live, you saw even then the uncertainty in his eyes, the fear in his smile, how he looked for reassurance that you had indeed decided to love _him_.

If he lied, it was a lie white like washed linen, Qingcheng decides. A lie, white like the wet cloth I wrapped myself in after bathing, white like the clouds that floated above us as we kissed under the warm sun.

He loved me, Qingcheng thought to herself as mountain peaks shrank beneath her floating feet. He loved me so much as to die for me, and in the end those words that took my heart and sealed my destiny, were they not his also? Did he not say those words to me again and for the first time before he died? You did not say-Qingcheng gasped as snowfall breathed along her arms, sleeves thrown back and billowing in the wind-you said I would lose every man I loved, you did not say I would lose every man who _loved me,_ Manshen!

I hit him, she remembers with bitten lips. I struck his face as he was bound and unarmed before me.

But the Great General Guangming called himself a liar and wept as he laughed for allowing you to suffer when you loved someone else. The man you loved died with a smile on his lips because you said you would go home together and it was only then that you realized, you fool Qingcheng, that the corpse you held in your arms had been the man you chose to love and the man you knew, the man you had lived with in that happy idyll in the house behind the trees. Do you know Kunlun? Do you know the man in black feathers who carries you beyond the shimmering waves of the aurora?

But it is Kunlun, Kunlun who is my true love, my destiny. Kunlun has given me another chance to choose. And Kunlun I will know in time.

And when cherry blossom falls dancing on the breeze it will be Guangming I remember.


End file.
